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ket tojefficiency, to the control of
credit, to some-privilege aaa ship
per,, to control of. ores or other
raw materials, or to the tariff.
Two attacks are made on this
program. Governor Wilson 'op
poses any further extension of
government po.wer, instead of by
extending it. . This statement is
opposed to all history and is con
trary to the whole trend of mod
ern development. The marvelous
progress than- we are now mak
ing is all along the line of extend
ing the powers or government.
We are enacting pure food laws;
setting up government inspection
of meat; building the Panama
canal ; regulating railroads ; fixing
gas and public utility rates; lim
iting capitalization ; building vast
irrigation reservoirs; redeeming
immense tracts of land; running
lines of steamships from Panama
to New York; supervising na
tional banks; running the post
office, to which we are now add
ing a .parcels post and a savings
bank. -,
Again the governor repeats
Mr, Brandeis'. .charge that our
policy of regulatingithe trusts by
a commission means -legalizing
.monopoly. This is a pure as
sumption. No proof is offered to
support it. It is true that some
men in and out of the new party
think that big business is here to
6tay, because these huge units can
produce more cheaply than small
er units, while others believe that
these hugs trusts won their posi
tion by privilege and not by effi
ciency. But this is a mere opinion.
Neither Mr. Roosevelt nor the'
platform anywhere says that if
the control of the market by the
trusts is due to- privilege that he
or we favor continuing that privi
lege. On the contrary, Roose
velt in his convention speech di
rectly declares that he will re
move privilegcas fast as we find
it and wherever we find it, and the
platform pledges the party to the
same principle.
All we say is that we find big
business here, with manifold and
increasing abuses, and we prom
ise to control it and its "evils while
we gather information for further
action. This is as far as we can
see down the road. Nor does reg
ulation of trusts lead logically to
legalizing monopoly. On the con
trary, the inevitable result is just
the opposite. Government con-
trol of trusts will disclose either
that the trusts are efficient and
therefore useful, in which event
we will do away with their evil
and preserve the good; or that
trusts owe their supremacy to
privilege.
We find a great and recent fact,
the control of markets by trusts,
and there is no government agen
cy in existence equipped to han
dle the condition. We propose to
create an adequate and powerful
agency. That is all. Is it .not
plain that- our planis superior to
that of the Democrats ? They of
fer more lawsuits. We offer a
powerful government agency ""
created for the special purpose of
locating the reasons of trust con
trol and preventing extortion in
prices and destruction of competi-